The twilight language explores hidden meanings and synchromystic connections via onomatology (study of names) and toponymy (study of place names). This blog further investigates "name games" and "number coincidences" found in news and history. Examinations are also found in my book The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Sunday, February 22, 2015

At the intersection of Minnesota State Highway 77* and Interstate 494 sits the Mall of America (MoA), a shopping mall owned by the Triple Five Group. It is located in Bloomington, Minnesota (a suburb of the Twin Cities).

[*In Alan-Abbadessa Green's Suicide Kings (see here from The Sync Book), he greatly details the significance of the number 77 in the JFK assassination and 9/11.]

The Mall contains the United Airlines Flight 93 memorial, for those who died aboard during the September 11, 2001 attacks—the bust of Tom Burnett (who was born and raised in Bloomington) is on the west side of the first floor, next to the fountain in front of Nordstrom.

Thomas Edward Burnett, Jr. (May 29, 1963 – September 11, 2001) was the vice-president and chief operating officer of Thoratec Corporation, a medical devices company based in Pleasanton, California. Burnett was born and grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota. At Thomas Jefferson Senior High School, where he wore jersey No. 11 and then No. 10, he led the Jaguars to the state finals as their starting quarterback in 1980. He graduated in 1981. On September 11, 2001, Burnett, who was born in Bloomington, Minnesota, was a passenger on board United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked as part of the September 11 attacks. He died when the plane crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

A new video from Al Shabaab purportedly shows the terror group calling for an attack on Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minnesota.

“Be particularly careful” if you intend to visit the Mall of America, the second largest mall in the USA.

That’s the cautionary message Sunday from Jeh Johnson, the U.S. secretary of Homeland Security, in the wake of Somali terrorist group Al-Shabab releasing a video calling for attacks on Western malls. The video specifically mentioned the megamall in Bloomington.

"I'm not telling people to not go to the mall," Secretary Jeh Johnson said on NBC's Meet The Press. "I think that there needs to be an awareness."

He also said, "I'm saying that the public needs to be particularly vigilant."“If anyone is planning to go to the Mall of America today, they’ve got to be particularly careful,” Johnson said in a televised interview with CNN. “There will be enhanced security there, but public vigilance, public awareness and public caution in situations like this is particularly important, and it’s the environment we’re in, frankly.”

Mall of America says it has heightened security after a video threatening a terror attack was apparently released by a Somali militant group with ties to al-Qaeda. The group, al-Shabaab, previously took responsibility for the 2013 attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that left more than 60 people dead.

The video released online focused mostly on the conflict between Kenya and Somalia and the Westgate shopping mall attack. The video calls for similar attacks at the Mall of America and elsewhere.

"If just a handful of mujahideen fighters could bring Kenya to a complete standstill for nearly a week, imagine what a dedicated mujahedeen in the West could do to the American or Jewish-owned shopping centers across the world," an unidentified man says on the video.

"What if such an attack was to occur in the Mall of America in Minnesota? Or the West Edmonton Mall in Canada? Or in London's Oxford Street?" the man says, encouraging supporters to "hurry up, hasten towards heaven and do not hesitate."

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Sunday saying U.S. officials were aware of the call for "Westgate style" attacks against shopping malls in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The Mall of America, among the largest shopping malls in the world with more than 500 stores and 50 restaurants, employs more than 12,000 people. It generally is considered the world's busiest mall, with more than 40 million visitors annually.

"Mall of America has implemented extra security precautions. Some may be noticeable to guests, and others won't be," the statement said, adding, "The safety and security of our guests, employees and tenants remains our top priority."

Al-Shabaab, based in southern Somalia, was declared a terror organization under U.S. law in 2008. The group, which pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012, took responsibility for an attack Friday at a Mogadishu hotel targeting government ministers that killed 25.

Johnson, who made appearances on five Sunday shows, said the video threat reflects the militant effort to encourage supporters to conduct attacks in their homelands.

"We're in a new phase now, and I'm afraid that this most recent video release reflects that," Johnson said on ABC's This Week.

A new video from Al Shabaab purportedly shows the terror group calling for an attack on Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minn.

According to Fox 9, the mall is one of three similar targets the terror group specifically names, including West Edmonton Mall in Canada and the Oxford Street shopping area in London.

The video purportedly shows 6 minutes of graphic images and the terrorists celebrating the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed more than 60 people.

An image of the Mall of America is shown in the video, alongside its GPS coordinates. The mall says it is ramping up its security in response.

Al Shabaab, Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels, claimed responsibility for a Friday attack on a hotel in Somalia's capital that killed 25 people and wounded 40, the country's government said Saturday.

One Islamic extremist rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the gate of the Central Hotel, and another went in and blew himself up, a statement from Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke's office said.

Government officials were meeting at the Central Hotel at the time, and the statement said Mogadishu's deputy mayor and two legislators were among the dead. It was unclear whether the government's report of 25 dead included the two bombers.

Despite the loss of key strongholds in Somalia, Al Shabaab, which is linked to Al Qaeda, continues to stage attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere.

The group, designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department in 2008, has close ties to Al Qaeda through its senior leaders. It has attracted several radical volunteers from Minneapolis and Americans began traveling to Somalia in 2007 to join the group.

Somalia's president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, condemned the Friday attack and said it would not derail efforts by his government to restore peace to Somalia, which is recovering from decades of war.

This is the second attack on a hotel in Mogadishu in less than a month. On January 22, 2015, three Somali nationals were killed when a suicide car bomber blew himself up at the gate of a hotel housing the advance party of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited the country days later.

Friday, February 20, 2015

It was bound to happen, with the name it was give, but The Torch is on fire

A fire erupted early Saturday morning, February 21, 2015, at the Marina Torch in Dubai, the 79-floor skyscrapper that is among the world's tallest residential buildings. According to a report in the English-language Gulf News, thousands were evacuated from the building but high winds hindered firefighters' initial efforts to contain the blaze. It has since been extinguished, according to local witnesses.

There are no reported injuries but the fire was fueled by windy conditions and had engulfed between 10 and 15 floors of the more than 1,100-foot-tall tower, named The Torch.

Designed by award winning architects Khatib and Alami, The Torch rises 351 metres (1152 feet) into the Dubai sky. The tower has 86 floors containing a total of 676 apartments along with a gym, a sauna, a steam room and an eight level garage.

The Marina Torch, also known as Dubai Torch or just The Torch, is a supertall residential skyscraper at the Dubai Marina, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The tower became the tallest residential building in the world in 2011, surpassing Q1, in Gold Coast, Australia. The tower reaches 336.1 m (1105 ft) in height with 79 floors above ground.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

This year, 2015, is the 40th anniversary of the publishing of my first book (with Jerome Clark). The Unidentified appeared in 1975, from Warner Books. It was republished in combination with its 1978 sister book, Creatures of the Outer Edge, in 2006; see here.

Down through the years, there are over a 100 books that I have contributed to (through introductions, prefaces, forewords), authored, coauthored, and/or edited. That's a good number of books to have seen published, released, reprinted, and revised in old and new editions with your name attached to them.

Seeing that sentence, you probably don't believe it when I say that authors never really ever get rich. Oh, okay, maybe one percent do, if they write 50 Shades of whatever, but most of us are poor and using free sites like blogger to keep writing, waiting to pull things together for our next book. But there is a truth to the fact that the more books you have out there, the less "original" your next publisher thinks you are. That is especially if you specialize in the nonfiction field of unexplained natural and human mysteries, it seems.

Let's look at one truth of what happens to an established writer like myself.

So much has been recycled on the web by others from my books, articles and blogs, today publishers think I'm "borrowing" from others' work when a search of the contents of a new manuscript shows up seemingly similar sections via an online search. This is a troubling trend for authors, of course.

The reality is you can find anything and everything on the net, and everyone seems to use your stuff, as they please, without original attributions.

But it is nothing new. It use to be done by the hard work of collecting all the works on one topic, and extracting what worked for your next "masterpiece." What's new, of course, is that "Google," "Yahoo," and other forms of online searching are available Internet wide of a vast body of written material. There is even a term for this acquiring of material from others and its use by Forteans in books about "Fortean phenomena" or "Forteana."

It's called the "Bermuda Triangle Syndrome."

Photo credit: Fortean Picture Library.

Author Dave Goudsward, in an article he wrote in 1978, coined this practice the "Bermuda Triangle Syndrome," after Berlitz's reuse of the same stories in his various books. This was because intermediate authors had "borrowed" and modified Berlitz's own material to the point where Berlitz himself didn't recognize it when he went looking to "borrow" material.

In academia, such borrowing occurs all the time, as in scholarly citing of others' work and the revision and inclusion of the material in new writings. In the world of popular literature, it is often done, but more casually and with an understanding it happens often between colleagues in, for example, the Fortean field.

Basically, what Goudsward did in his examination was to put all the "Bermuda Triangle" books in publication order and then he traced the evolution of various snippets and stories about various ships and aircraft used, from title to title. He ended up with one of Berlitz's later books with a story unrecognizable from the original. As Goudsward pointed out in his analysis, Richard Winer was probably the most successful of the revisionists, but, of course, Berlitz was too, even of his own work.

While Charles Berlitz would become the most famous, and by extension, make the most money from his books on the topic, the actual coining of the term "Bermuda Triangle" seems to point to Vincent Gaddis, a Fortean friend of Ivan T. Sanderson. In the February 1964 issue of Argosy, Vincent Gaddis' article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" used the phrase widely for the first time.

Most of us try to be very careful about the incorrect of use of our old material, especially as seen through the eyes of ours. But then, sometimes it has evolved so far from your own writings, if you try to quote or paraphrase your own investigated case to give it new clothing, via another source, you probably will be accused of inappropriately using a turn of a phase from someone else, when ultimately, it might have been yours in the first place.

What a world.

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Monday, February 16, 2015

It's Oscar season, so perhaps it is time to talk of movies and violence again?

Events do not let us think otherwise. In the end, it is about Falling Down's "I'm going home," and The Wizard of Oz's "There's no place like home," isn't it? And the notion "to protect and serve" what is one's view of "home." It all stems from your homeland, your hometown, your 'hood, your building, your house, your automobile, or even your parking space.

Chapel Hill comes to mind. And L.A. too.

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On February 10, 2015, at 5:15 p.m., Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were killed in their home in Finley Forest Condominiums on Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States.

The victims.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, a former car parts salesman, allegedly shot dead the three Muslim university students at point blank range, in their heads, before turning himself into police. Hicks had moved to Chapel Hill in 2005 from Bethalto, Illinois. His motive, allegedly, was not because he is anti-Muslim, but because he was angry because of an ongoing parking space dispute. However, additional information from his first wife notes that Hicks was obsessed with watching "incessantly" the 1993 film Falling Down starring Michael Douglas, about a divorced lawyer who loses his job and embarks on a shooting rampage across Los Angeles.

We've heard of this before.

Before George Hennard crashed his truck into Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, on October 16, 1991 and sprayed it with gunfire, he had watched a documentary video at home about a similar mass murderer, James Huberty, who killed 21 people at a California McDonald's on July 18, 1984. ~ Loren Coleman, The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2003).

(In American English, especially as viewed as slang, the word "hick" is a derogatory term for an unsophisticated provincial person, usually said to be Caucasian, Midwestern- or Southern-raised, racist, and anti-semitic.)

Looking to analyze films like Falling Down, it opens up an entire area of film study.

Doing this, a reviewer once observed that filmmaker and professor Thom Andersen

...pushes the issue of de-humanization, of symbolic genocide, further. A venture such as the Michael Douglas-fronted Falling Down presents the case of a white-collar, WASP-y male who, abiding no more of an interminable traffic jam, deserts his car and, trekking across Los Angeles, essentially loses his mind, though not his sense of entitlement. ~ Peter Moysaenko ~ 12.7.2009

Synchromystics, Forteans, and twilight language translators watch motion pictures on a different level than most moviegoers. They observe everything. Not just the plot. They look beyond the obvious. They experience the settings, the scene, and the sequences with new eyes. So too, it appears, do architectural students, film buffs, and cityscape fans. A deep, powerful, rarely seen documentary looking at film, analyzes movies on this level.

I've made it no secret for years that the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and films have a special meaning to me and others.

Director Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) - at 169 minutes -is a genius synchrocinematic visual essay. If you have not viewed and digested it, you should. Here's a sample and some thoughts:

Los Angeles, Thom Andersen’s hometown, has figured, it seems, for most of its existence, as a misunderstood mutant, a territory without definitive identity, despite now serving as residence to nearly four million people. A McDonald’s restaurant in the City of Industry remains forever closed to the public, but functions exclusively as a set for commercials. The Bradbury Building has been cast as a Mandalay locale or as the headquarters of an East Coast newspaper. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House has provided context for such varying visions as that of Blade Runner, The House on Haunted Hill (a cheesy Vincent Price joint), and a Ricky Martin music video. Hollywood refuses to take Los Angeles for what it is, Andersen insists, if the professionals that make up the movie machine have any clue about its essence to begin with. Hollywood denigrates what should represent the pride of Los Angeles’s eclectic architectural scene, casting its Modernist and International style homes as dens of iniquity, the mansions of gangsters and drug lords, rather than centers for evolved living....

We are bidden to watch not as Hollywood expects us to, but with voluntary attention, getting past the expertly dressed leads and zeroing in on the more elemental concern of setting. After all, there’s no story in a vacuum, and as the trumpeted notion of country, the notion of property over country, reminds daily, a life’s nothing without a home. ~ Peter Moysaenko ~ December 7, 2009.

As Andersen notes in his documentary, and I have too, the films containing FLW-trained architect John Lautner's homes are frequent targets of attention too.

The clean bold lines of John Lautner’s famous houses are hard to resist for moviemakers. The most famous houses are the Elrod House, which was Willard Whyte’s crib in Diamonds are Forever, the Chemosphere used in Body Double, the Goldstein House featured in The Big Lebowski, and the Schaffer House, which offers a luxurious repose for A Single Man. Source.

Personally, I taught a weekly 3 hour long documentary film course, for 23 semesters, from 1983 to 2003, at the University of Southern Maine. Sorry to know Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) appeared after my course ended. I would have loved to screen it for my students.

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Movies in order of appearance in Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself(2003).

(I wish someone would do I similar list, from his documentary, of the names of all the architects and the buildings mentioned in his film.)

A freight train in Fayette County, southern West Virginia, carrying crude oil derailed on February 16, 2015. The derailment caused an explosion that set at least one house on fire. The man in the residence, identified as Morris Bounds, escaped in his bare feet without serious injury. This took place near Mount Carbon, described as being along WV Route 61, near Armstrong Creek Road. This area is also known as Powelltown Hollow.

Several of the train cars spilled into the Kanawha River, east of Montgomery, and caught fire, prompting an evacuation order for a mile-and-a-half around the area where the train skipped the tracks, according to NBC affiliate WSAZ.

No injuries have been reported, according to the Fayette County Sheriff's Department. The Fayette County Fire Department responded to the scene, the sheriff's department said.

At the other end of the Kanawha River, 80 miles away, is Point Pleasant, a city in and the county seat of Mason County, West Virginia, USA, at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. The town is known for sightings of Mothman in 1966-1967, and the collapse of the Silver Bridge on December 15, 1967.

The Kanawha River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 97 mi (156 km) long, in the State of West Virginia.

Fayette County was created by Act of the Virginia General Assembly, passed February 28, 1831, from parts of Greenbrier, Kanawha, Nicholas, and Logan counties. It was named in honor of the Marquis de la Fayette, who had played a key role assisting the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Virginia previously had a Fayette County, which was lost to form the new state of Kentucky. Accordingly, in the State records of Virginia, there will be listings for Fayette County from 1780–1792 and Fayette County from 1831-1863. Neither location is still located in Virginia and despite naming a county after him twice, Virginia no longer has a county named for the Marquis de la Fayette.

Fayette County was home to a disastrous mine explosion at Red Ash in March 1900, in which 46 miners were killed.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

The dead gunman has been identified as Omar El-Hussein (shown above and below).

Beginning on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2015, Copenhagen, Denmark was rocked by two shootings that mirrored the terrorist shootings in Paris last month.

Krudttoenden Attack

A shooting at a free speech event featuring Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist, who had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad and a second shooting hours later outside a synagogue left two dead and five police officers wounded in Copenhagen, stirring fears that another terror spree was under way in a European capital a month after 17 people were killed in Paris attacks.

No suspects were arrested.

The first shooting happened shortly before 4 p.m. Saturday, February 14th. Danish police said the gunman used an automatic weapon to shoot through the windows of the Krudttoenden cultural center during a panel discussion on freedom of expression following the Paris attacks. A 55-year-old man attending the event was killed, while three police officers were wounded. The victim has not been identified.

The gunman then fled in a carjacked Volkswagen Polo that was found later a few miles away, police said.

Police initially said there were two gunmen at the cultural center but later said they believed there was only one shooter. They described him as 25 to 30 years old with an athletic build and carrying a black automatic weapon. They released a blurred photograph of the suspect wearing dark clothes and a scarf covering part of his face.

Lars Vilks, 68, who has faced numerous death threats for caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad, was one of the main speakers at the event, titled "Art, blasphemy and freedom of expression." He was whisked away by his bodyguards unharmed as the shooting began. He felt he was targeted.

Filmmaker Killed

The man who was killed on Valentine's Day in the Copenhagen attack was a documentary filmmaker who worked on a film about terrorists and another about an Australian boomerang champion.

Finn Nørgaard (1959 – February 14, 2015) was a Danish filmmaker who was involved in several documentary and feature films.

Nørgaard received a cand.phil. degree in Film and Communication from the University of Copenhagen in 1991.

Nørgaard was a photographer for the 1983 Danish detective film Adam Hart i Sahara and editor of the 1986 Danish documentary film Soul to Soul. He served as producer for Kun for Forrykte, a 1988 documentary film about Eik Skaløe and Steppeulvene. He worked behind the camera as clapper loader in Peter Eszterhás' 1989 film En afgrund af frihed.

From 1989 until 2001 Nørgaard worked at DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation). In 2001 he became co-owner of Filmselskabet (Film Company). During this period he is also credited as assistant camera in the 1992 German film Die Terroristen! and made an appearance as a bodyguard in Thomas Borch Nielsen's 1998 film Skyggen (Webmaster).

In 2004 he directed the documentary film Boomerang Drengen (Boomerang Boy) and was responsible for production of documentary films about the Lê Lê restaurant chain: Lê Lê - De jyske vietnamesere from 2008.

In 2009, for TV 2, Nørgaard directed and produced En anden vej: Historien om fire nydanskere og en koncernchef, which followed former Tryg-CEO Stine Bosse and four young immigrants to Denmark with a criminal background on a pilgrimage to El Camino.

Nørgaard also directed and produced film for Mærsk, SAS and Microsoft, among others.

Finn Nørgaard was killed on February 14, 2015 in an attack on a discussion meeting titled "Art, Blasphemy, and Freedom of Expression" organized by the Lars Vilks Committee and held at the Krudttønden culture center in Østerbro. The perpetrator shot with a submachine gun from close range. In the same incident two PET bodyguards and a police officer were wounded.

Krystalgade Synagogue Attack

After searching for the first gunman for hours, police reported the second shooting in downtown Copenhagen after midnight Sunday. The gunman opened fire at two police officers outside the synagogue on Krystalgade. They were wounded in the arms and legs but were not in life-threatening condition.

Right behind the synagogue, a young girl was celebrating her confirmation (bat mitzvah) with a party of about 80 people, the Jewish Society of Denmark said.

Dan Uzan, 37, who was standing at the gate providing security for the party, was shot and killed.

Authorities pieced together surveillance images from across the capital and tracked the suspect's movements....
The footage shows the man going from the scene of a shooting to where he apparently abandoned a vehicle, and to a taxi cab.
"By interviewing the taxi driver, we got the address where he dropped off the person," [Copenhagen police investigator Joergen] Skov said. "We have been keeping that address under observation."
He said when officers tried to make contact with the suspect at the Copenhagen apartment on Sunday, the suspect opened fire. Police fired back, killing the gunman.

The dead gunman was Danish-Arab, 22, living in Copenhagen, and was on the radar of authorities for gang activity, not for suspected Islamist extremism.

The suspect remains unidentified.

The Copycat Effect
The targets and methodology in the Paris and Copenhagen attacks appear to be extremely similar.

The cartoonists in Paris were the prime targets of the terrorists. In Copenhagen, Lars Vilks felt targeted.

"Yes We Can," the image reads. "A Bullet A Day Keeps the Infidel Away."

Vilks became a target after his 2007 cartoon depicting Mohammed with the body of a dog -- an animal that conservative Muslims consider unclean...
Like Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane "Charb" Charbonnier -- who was killed in the attack on that magazine's Paris offices last month -- Vilks was one of nine faces on a "Most Wanted" graphic published by al Qaeda's Inspire magazine for "crimes against Islam."
Others include a pair of Danish journalists who published 12 cartoons depicting Mohammed in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper; Florida pastor Terry Jones, who burned a Quran; and Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie.
[Helle Merete Brix, a journalist and founder of the Lars Vilks Committee] said, "there's no doubt" the Copenhagen event was targeted because of Vilks, who has "not been able to live a normal life" for years. Source.

"What other motive could there be? It's possible it was inspired by Charlie Hebdo," Lars Vilks said, referring to the January 7 attack by Islamic extremists on the French newspaper that had angered Muslims by lampooning Muhammad.

Police spokesman Joergen Skov said it was possible the gunman had planned the "same scenario" as in the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Krystalgade has been associated, historically, to the location of the Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, with origins dating back to 1537, of an often-illustrated cabinet of natural history curiosities (also known as Kunstkabinett, Kunstkammer, Wunderkammer, Cabinets of Wonder, and wonder-room) of Ole Worm (13 May 1588 – 31 August 1654), also known as Olaus Wormius, a Danish physician and antiquary.

The synagogue on Krystalgade.

Regarding the photograph at top: "It's only a trick produced by the angle of the camera and what the suspected shooter is wearing, but doesn't he look a bit like the Joker in this CCTV picture?" ~ Author Robert Schneck.

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About Me

Investigator of human and animal mysteries since 1960. Swamp Thing character "Coleman Wadsworth" in #4:7 and more in #4:8, is a tribute.
Author of over 35 books, including The Unidentified (1975), Mysterious America (1983/2007), Suicide Clusters (1987), Cryptozoology A to Z (1999), Bigfoot! (2003), The Copycat Effect (2004), and field guides.
Educated in anthropology-zoology at SIU-Carbondale, and psychiatric social work at Simmons College School of Social Work. Began doctoral work in anthropology (Brandeis University) and family violence (UNH). Taught at NE universities (1980 to 2003), while concurrently a senior researcher at the Muskie School (1983 to 1996), before retiring to write, lecture, consult, & open museum. Popular documentary course was taught for 23 semesters; appeared on C2C, The Larry King Show, MonsterQuest, Lost Tapes, In Search Of, and other tv programs.
Loren Coleman is a dedicated father (Caleb, Malcolm, Des), cryptozoologist, media consultant, and baseball fan.